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Seto Kaiba

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Everything posted by Seto Kaiba

  1. Seto Kaiba
    Give it time... folks are so keyed up to see the return of familiar characters like Jean-Luc Picard, Plenty of Two Seven of Nine, and Data that they've forgotten Star Trek: Picard is developed, produced, written, directed, filmed, and edited by the same Bad Reboot clown college responsible for the Star Trek: Discovery series they so thoroughly loathed. This is what CBS and Bad Reboot were counting on to sell the series in its first season, or at least its first few episodes. Trot out familiar characters from parts of Trek the fans don't hate and rely on that borrowed gloss from better shows to keep the Trekkies from noticing any signs of the franchise's Kurtzmanitis infection going septic. Not a lot of original thought on display, IMO... this wouldn't even be the first time Bad Reboot's bad actors toyed with the notion of un-killing Data. They did the same in the prequel comic they did to set up the Kelvin-verse, in which Data's copied mind takes over B4's body and he goes on to become captain of the Enterprise-E. Kind of a slam dunk there for the fans, given that killing Data off back in Nemesis was so wildly unpopular that all three extant Star Trek continuities persisting after the film undid it right away. I can't say I'm all that psyched for Seven of Nine either. She had some good episodes in late Voyager, but she was meant mainly to arrest a ratings plummet by being more decorative than other women on the cast and became a bit of a black hole swallowing up plots later on, with a lot of them feeling REALLY forced like her relationship with wooden indian Chakotay. While it lasts, I suppose... For my part, I'm going to keep my expectations as low as possible in the hopes that I'll be pleasantly surprised for once. I'd really like to be wrong, and for Star Trek to be good again. The Star Trek relaunch novels are one of the three coordinated efforts to keep Star Trek going after Nemesis spun in... the other two being Star Trek Online and the J.J. Abrams reboot trilogy flop. They're essentially an Expanded Universe line of novels that pick up after the ends of their respective shows ("relaunching" those storylines) and continue forward, managed by a single creative team as a coordinated shared universe development. There are a few TOS side stories, but the relaunch novel-verse focuses on the relaunched stories of Star Trek: the Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek Voyager, and Star Trek: Enterprise.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    and I am 2000% done. No thank you. Yeah, the only thing they could think of to add some appeal to Picard was to - hey hey - bring back the Borg. It was a bad idea when the Star Trek relaunch novelverse did it, and time has not sweetened the idea.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    The plot doesn't make any sense anyway... so what can they possibly spoil? It's almost Dadaist in its complete devotion to being nonsense.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    No, I think he was reading it right... why would Sony put its money behind a project that Harmony Gold had such little confidence in that it refused to invest its own money in it? For an allegedly-professional outfit that claims its product was a genre- and industry-defining universally-celebrated masterpiece it's not exactly congruous for them to be begging fans, hat in hand, for money on a crowdfunding platform meant for launching indie projects.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    A fair amount of the new product announcements looked like Happy Meal toys rather than the expensive collectibles they're going to be priced as... "Dear Harmony Gold, please prove that you actually own something of the IP you sold us a license to. Sincerely, Sony Pictures." I can just imagine the furor going on at Harmony Gold over that one... this feels less like Sony asking for concept materials than it does Sony asking Harmony Gold to prove that this sh*t-awful brand hasn't been six feet under for over a decade now. ... even evil corporations have standards.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    ... is it even possible to spoil a completely incoherent story? What Titan Comics did with this series is the literary equivalent of a game of Calvinball.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    He's gone independent a bunch of times out of frustration with the mainstream publishers, but AFAIK this is his first actual retirement. His Rasputin-esque hair and beard always seemed like their own character to me, I wonder if they'll retire too or just jump to a new host.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Only for merchandise. Harmony Gold sought and obtained an addendum to its existing license agreement with Tatsunoko Production for the purpose of acquiring the merchandising rights (outside Japan) to Macross: Do You Remember Love? c.2001 as part of the company's efforts to halt, or at least restrict, US imports of Japanese Macross toys to protect their then-new licensee Toynami and its nascent Masterpiece Collection and Super-Poseable toy lines for Robotech. They don't have the distribution rights to Macross: Do You Remember Love?, and they don't have any rights to Macross: Flash Back 2012 or the Macross IP and thus wouldn't be able to use Megaroad-01 under any circumstances. Besides the fact that HG didn't license the merchandising rights to DYRL? until 15 years after Robotech II: the Sentinels was cancelled, Harmony Gold were always aware they they could not legally use Macross designs in new animated or live action works and couldn't afford to hire the Macross staff to create new designs for them either. That inability to use Macross designs was the reason Robotech II: the Sentinels redesigned all the surviving characters and used a mixture of original mechanical designs created by Tatsunoko Production and the Genesis Climber MOSPEADA designs Tatsunoko owned free and clear. The SDF-3 seen in the Sentinels animation that was completed before it was cancelled isn't the warship's true appearance, it's a faux-Zentradi veneer built around the outer hull of the SDF-3 to disguise it as a Zentradi ship in the hopes it'd pass for friendly under a cursory inspection and approach the Robotech Masters homeworld unmolested. The SDF-3 is never shown without its Zentradi camouflage shell until after her bow gets shot off and she gets rebuilt with a MOSPEADA aesthetic in the prequel comic for Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles. Yeah, that's the one. Even Robotech fans frequently likened the ship's appearance to a turd.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Fortunately KyoAni has more than one studio facility... but what a disaster for the industry, losing so many talented animators and support staff. A lot of their stuff wasn't really my cup of tea, but the quality of their work was pretty consistently amazing. Been a weird week for industry news too... a couple days back I saw an article from an animator working on Symphogear XV trying to argue that a transformation sequence involving pole dancing totally wasn't "sleazy" or exploitative. From what he described, the staff pretty clearly tried to make it less sleazy, but that isn't the same thing as not being sleazy at all. (It's probably easier to give it a pass in Gainax's Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt since that whole show was unapologetically trying to push the limits of good - or bad - taste.) Black Lagoon's apparently getting a spinoff manga about Sawyer, the "cleaner" who handles body disposal for the various toughs in Roanapur. I'm still waiting and hoping they'll do more with the animation, since they basically stopped at the El Baile de la Muerte story arc's conclusion. A few episodes into Magical Sempai and it's every bit as one-note as Ao-chan Can't Study!, but I'd say it's more entertaining by far since the running gags are more your typical boke and tsukkomi routine with the assistant as the straight man instead of being focused on maximum lewdness.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    What a disaster. Kyoto Animation has an impressive filmography of really beautiful animation work, the loss and injury of so many talented animators and support staff is a genuine tragedy for the anime industry. I don't think the police have officially commented on the culprit's motive yet.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Well c'mon, if you open Pandora's Box you have to cope with the evils it contains.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    I've got multiple print copies of FANKY's whole Macross doujinshi series, but I've done very little scanning since the translators here tend to avoid distributing scans for various reasons. lol, I know precisely the scan you mean. It's a surprisingly good source for (worksafe) anime-themed periodicals too even if the site itself isn't safe for work. I hadn't seen any scans in circulation of the first fleet book until you posted that, and I've seen nothing for the 3rd fleet book and the first book in the series.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    It's a somewhat hard-to-come-by limited printing doujinshi, and I don't believe it's been scanned by anyone thus far. Copies occasionally turn up on Mandarake or Yahoo Japan auctions. I can try to use Office Lens to scan the relevant pages this weekend. Right now my study's all torn up while the carpets are being replaced, so I can't get to the bookshelves.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Aldnoah.Zero is rapidly shaping up to be one of the worst-written original mecha anime properties I've seen in recent years. How did this hot mess manage to last 24 episodes without being cancelled? I'm four episodes in and the setting makes basically no sense. How did Mars evolve a strict feudal society rife with fantastic racism when it's only been colonized for thirty years? How did the Martian colonists reverse engineer enough technology to put them centuries ahead of Earth in an even shorter span of time? Why is a high school student with an at-best moderate grasp of science consistently more effective than the most highly trained soldiers despite having an old training mecha instead of a state-of-the-art military machine? There are plot holes big enough to hide a planet in all throughout this series.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    IIRC, they wanted to salvage intact systems from the SDF-1 for use on the SDF-2 because in the Robotech version of things it was an inscrutable holy grail of the most advanced alien tech anywhere in the universe instead of just another random mass production warship like in Macross. Nope, it's still there... another orphaned plot hole in Macek's butchered version of Macross. That was popular fanon, but I don't know if they ever actually confirmed it was official. The Comico comics actually did draw another ship in that scene, standing back-to-back with the SDF-1. Entertainingly enough, as crudely drawn as the comic is, the design they used is visibly the unused SDF-2 design Kazutaka Miyatake did for Super Dimension Fortress Macross.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    That's from a doujinshi, mind you... FANKY Publishing tried to go back and rationalize the internal layouts of a bunch of the ships in a style not dissimilar to the Macross II: the Role-Playing Game Deck Plans books, but in so doing ignored or changed the stats for a bunch of the ships and ignored depictions of internal layouts from the shows themselves. (It's great fodder for RPG stats, mind you, since it has art of the various described-but-not-animated variants of some ships like the Northampton-class and invented a few all-original classes that make good logistical sense and/or just look damn cool like their super-Guantanamo the Kaga-class, or stealth cruisers outfitted with different weaponry under the name Osaka-class.)
  17. Seto Kaiba
    FANKY's Battleships of the Galaxy Vol.1 has the Asuka II-class at: Length: 353.5m Width: 90.1m Mass: 64,000t Crew: 3,600 Reactors: 2 Capacity: ~80 craft (48 VF, 6 Destroid, ~20 others)
  18. Seto Kaiba
    To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts doesn't really feel like it's living up to the promise shown by its first episode... I'm actually pretty disappointed by that.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    I think he built his model off the rough line art that's all that's really been widely published, which only shows ports for three... even though the shooting model does in fact have six. Decent line art for the Asuka II wasn't properly available outside of Macross Chronicle, and even then it's printed so dark it's difficult to read.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Odds are the Asuka II wasn't even carrying that many... the estimated total VF-0 production was about 58 aircraft1 divided between the CVN-99 Asuka II, her sister ship CVN-100 Graf Zeppelin II, unknown UN Marine Corps assignments, and units placed elsewhere for testing like Grand Cannon III or Earth orbit. Taking out the VF-0Cs that were given to the Marines and assuming one to two units seconded to the Space Proving Wing for space testing, that's 24-26 aircraft per carrier. Enough for one full strength squadron, basically, assuming that there weren't any other bases or carriers that were given them. Assuming each carrier had a minimum of one minimum-strength squadron, that's 15 VF-0s. Curiously, despite massively overstating the size of the Asuka II, Master File contends it only had approximately 20 VF-0s and 20 other aircraft including things like the Cat's Eye, Mom's Kitchen, Sea Sergeant, F-14++ Tomcats, and the QF-2200 series Ghosts we see in the OVA. 1. 24 VF-0A, 6 VF-0B (4 stock, 2 recon pattern), 6 VF-0C, 18 VF-0D, 4 VF-0S. Bare minimum, the 6 VF-0C were assigned to the UN Marine Corps and we know at least one or two units were given to the Space Proving Wing.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    I'll bear that in mind if I'm ever planning a vacation to the 8th circle of hell.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Yup, that's what they did for Shadow Chronicles for like ten years until they admitted it was cancelled all along, and what they did with Academy until the studio called them on it.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Really, I wouldn't call that a glimmer of talent. Han Solo is no strategic mastermind, and he isn't even a particularly good smuggler. He took advantage of Imperial sloppiness caused by the Imperials fearing for their lives thanks to their boss's lack of people skills. Fett was just able to think more clearly than the Imperials because he knew he had job security... Vader wasn't going to just kill an expensive contractor without a very good reason. That Fett was able to spot the Falcon isn't a reflection on his skills so much as it's a reflection on how Lord Vader's toxic management style hurt the performance of those under him. They were all too worried about upsetting him to think clearly. Phasma was established from the start to be the chief Drill Sergeant Nasty for the First Order, and we actually see her operate in that capacity... so I wouldn't say she doesn't show a hint of ability. It's just that the hints she shows aren't exactly awesome since the only thing impressive about drill sergeants is the volume level at which they dispense harsh invectives. IMO, the reasons why that kind of thing would not be widely used would be obvious... it's hideously dangerous to use anywhere in the vicinity of an inhabited star system since you're basically spraying the area with relativistic (if not superluminal) shrapnel that could intercept the orbit of a planet or the course of a ship and shred it just as easily as the initial impact shreds the target. Then there's the concern about the shrapnel that DOESN'T hit something immediately forming navigational hazards in the future. Also, don't ships generally have to sit still for a bit to jump to lightspeed? And IIRC they pop into hyperspace almost immediately after, which would make the window for executing a tactic like that very narrow. So it's strategically difficult, probably politically highly unwelcome, and probably a war crime too... so not the kind of thing you'd want to attempt if you want to keep the general public on your side. No, that's my entire point... these characters aren't allowed to be wrong and cannot experience consequences for their actions due to their status as representational characters. That's how we keep getting these ridiculous plot tumors. Canto Bight happened to facilitate Holdo bravely taking command of the Resistance so she could bravely commit suicide to bravely save the day (bravely) because her character sheet just says "brave woman leader". Likewise Finn and whatshername needing to go to Canto Bight on their bold mission to pass blanket judgement on a city full of people they've never met for the crime of not being wholly invested in the struggle most of the galaxy doesn't even know is going on and then bravely trip right at the finish line so they could have a big climactic battle where Finn could confront his abuser and b*tchslap her into a pit before helping Rey escape. All those people had to die so our heroes who haven't learned a damn thing can continue being heroes and boldly recreate the Rebellion now that there isn't a Resistance getting underfoot.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Boba Fett had Solo literally handed to him on a matte grey platter as a living freezie pop by Darth freaking Vader and his Stormtroopers... he captured NOTHING. If Fett isn't lunch for a colossal sandy anus, someone oughta ship those two... they can bond over how ineffectual they are. She's actually a clone... it's like the Weyouns in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Every time one gets killed they just pop the cork on a fresh one and hope the law of averages is on their side.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... Disney deliberately set out to make Captain Phasma into the new trilogy's Boba Fett, and they succeeded. Not necessarily in the way they intended to, but there's quality irony in that Phasma became the exact same thing Boba Fett was in the original trilogy... an alleged badass in a nice suit of armor whose badassery is purely informed ability, and who goes down faster than a blind drunk with an inner ear infection and one short leg. Phasma actually went out with more dignity than Fett, having gotten some actual menacing of the protagonists in and even a short fight, where Fett got off one shot that did zero actual harm before a blind man accidentally knocked him into the mouth of an anus monster. Do people really have an issue with that part? Honestly, weaponized FTL happens so infrequently in sci-fi despite being terrifyingly obvious for its destructive potential that I thought it was actually a pretty awesome sequence. (It's the only film example I can think of, while the only literary example that leaps to mind is in a Warhammer 40,000: Horus Heresy novel that lavishes an entire chapter on a suicidal near-lightspeed ramming attack.) ... I don't recall seeing any strategically-shaved rats in wigs, but I'll look again. That's what happens when you advertise almost your entire cast on the basis of what anti-discrimination protected class the actor/actress belongs to. Once the producers make the character all about the actor's [race/gender/sexual orientation/fondness for small yappy dogs] the writers are paralyzed by the producers unwillingness to do anything that might offend the members of that [race/gender/sexual orientation/small yappy dog lobby] and the character becomes a flat, bland, stock character who can't be developed very far because they're not allowed to make significant mistakes or have significant flaws. It isn't even a product of the politics in the story, just the ones in the studio.
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